From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Jan 18 17:18:08 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i0IMI8327724; Sun, 18 Jan 2004 17:18:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 17:18:08 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200401182218.i0IMI8327724@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #27 TELECOM Digest Sun, 18 Jan 2004 17:18:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 27 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Rants From A Current Norvergence Employee (K) All-Xeros Numbers (Bruce Howells) Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent (Christopher Wolf) Re: Wireless Home Networks (Joey Lindstrom) Re: Wireless Home Networks (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Equipment For Emulating POTS (John Sasso) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk is definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: theman242424@hotmail.com (K) Subject: Rants From A Current Norvergence Employee Date: 17 Jan 2004 23:36:05 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I saw some posts by employees talking about how much they love this company ... I dont like to lie and I dont like when people lie around me so they can make a buck. I fully realize that this post might lose my job with my own company but I really don't care. Im not going to lecture about the technology ... I will tell you the little that I know though. You see, they don't tell the phone appointment setters (inside sales reps) anything about how this crap works. Ignorance is bliss ... It seems like we use some kind of ATM technology to offer free long distance, no land line charges and incoming toll free calls. But we might be acting like a reseller in some cases ... I'm not sure about that. The cell phone service we resell. We can get deals from ATT and Verizon because we get it in bulk. So they can eliminate roaming, I hear by combining the carriers and networks. So from what I hear, the technology isn't crap; the major fear I would have in signing up is that 5 year lease. Some jerkoff said that telecom prices were going up. :) Thats BS. Telecom prices have been going down and I expect them to drop significantly as the major providers switch to voice over IP and Data technology ... It certainly isnt going up. When was the last time they raised the pricee on CD players or other technology? So you can judge for yourself about the product. I have talked to customer service and they said they dont get much complaints about the matrix. I think cells are a bigger concern. This company sucks. Its actually quite amusing though how bad the culture of a company can be. Norvergence is located in the shithole of a city of Newark, New Jersey. They occupy two buildings, one at 550 Broad and another quickly expanding one at 570 Broad. I work at 570 Broad. The base salary for the experienced inside sales people is 40K, 30K if you are totally inexperienced. I was told the average total package was 70-80K. Yeah, thats BS. I'm thinking now that the average is 50-55. You can make a 100K but thats not average. Thats my guess. The lies first start with the recruiters that spend the entire time pitching to you and making you feel special. But this company has so many screwed up rules to rape employees ... let me give you an example. If you are late by one minute in a two week period you get docked 1,000 dollars. Who does that? No one does that! So many people; if they are late will just quit right there. I know I will. As an inside sales rep you are required to get on the phones and call and set appointments. Your bonus is tied directly into how many appointments that you set are kept. The salary isnt bad for the skill level required, (though it isn't the easiest thing in the world to get hung up on all day long). And if you can't make one or two appointments per day they say you will be fired. The 570 building defintely has some over qualified people due to the crappy economy. They also have some smooth talking non educated people. Of our training class about half so far has quit or been fired. Really they hired people with hardly any filterring. Now back to the company culture. It feels like grade school. They not only monitor your phone for personal calls but they dont even let you use your cell phones on the premises for breaks. The fat short white guys with big bellies that run the floor look like they belong on the Sopranos. The majority of people below them are black. Supervisors for the inside sales are people that showed that they were great at setting appointments. Now I shouldnt be too hard on the management of 570. They are a world away from the 550 office. I have heard stories of that place. I heard that place feels like prison. The employees get half as much desk space and are treated like cattle ... you have to raise your hand to go to the bathroom. Seriously. Why? Well, to get government grants Norvergence has a prison work program. I have also heard there is a welfare to work program to get more grants in the "empowerment zone" in Newark. I should mention that I havent met these people yet. The reason being that the managers have arranged the breaks between the offices to be at different times so employees dont interact. In fact, there are several different departments that are told not to speak to others from the other departments. Training inside sales goes at a different time than the regular people so they dont learn that some of the stuff told in training was a lie. Customer service goes a different time from them. In the 550 building I hear it is extremely aggressive and they act like prison guards. Funny because there are a few professional-like people in that building as well. I have heard stories of people that have ran to work so fast so they are not late and have collapsed out of exertion and gone to the hospital. Here is another thing. If you quit or are fired you don't get your commissions. So that means whenever you leave you will lose about 3 weeks of commissions. Why? They do this so they can try to hook you into staying. As you can see the company was designed in a very machiavellian sort of way. They have other little gimmics to steal a little bit of your commission. Let's say I book a corporation for a visit and the corporation happens to sign on and have 300 locations. I should get paid for the 300 locations (which would be spectacular). But the commission for that is the same as the commission for 40. If it was a fair deal they would give you a year off of work if you made a deal like that. Also we have a Q and A department that has these stupid bureaucratic rules of questions that we need to have answered and recorded. This is done as they think that the sales reps might be lying. But its done stupidly. Im not sure if these methods are very good at all for building a company as everyone there hates the culture and there is a huge turnover. Anyone that says they love their job is a complete liar. They might love the money but no one loves the job. And the only people that love the money are people that didn't really have the qualifications or education to get a high paying corporate job. In terms of Nortel ... We dont pitch Nortel anymore. But I have seen an older script that said, "Hello, we are calling from Nortel Networks". I thought that was somewhat shady. I'm not sure about the agreement that Norvergence had with them before but they clearly are not friendly any more. I should make it clear that there are some quality individuals that work there, employees and supervisors. There are some very cool individuals. There are some knowledgeable honest people that work there ... but its the corporate culture that the executives formed that worries me. So I will be looking for other work in my extra hours ... but in the mean time I will be setting appointments. You don't have to buy the product but I think you should definitely get the appointment. :) That way Norvergence will pay its employees and not make money. -M [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you very much for sharing your experiences as an employee of Norvergence with us. There is really nothing I can add except to say I hope Mr. Solzano or Mr. Wolf or a person they designate will favor us with a reply/rebuttal if they wish to do so. I am sure that not a hundred percent of everything you said above is in the proper context; none of us, when we are angry speak in the proper context, even if what we say is otherwise truthful as far as it goes. So Wolf, Solzano or designee, the floor is yours if you want. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 11:15:32 -0500 From: Bruce Howells Subject: All-Zeros Numbers There's been an ongoing thread about numbers ending in four zeros; yes, they are of course valid. A couple jobs back, our hunt-group lead was (area code suppressed since I don't know who currently owns these numbers) NXX-891-0000, and our primary inbound FAX (aging myself and this story by saying "our singular inbound") was NXX-890-0000. Yep, *five* zeros. We all spent quite a bit of time convincing folks that these were real, and not missing-data placeholders. (If you recognize these numbers ... drop me a hello!) -Bruce Howells, bhowells@earthlink.net ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 18 Jan 2004 05:36:32 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent > Can you provide a handful of examples of systems where the maintainer > of automatically arranges for email addressed to > @ to be relayed to the owner of .? Try to > include some examples from two decades ago (the very birth of the DNS > system), since you claim this system has been in use that long. > Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu > Arlington, MA That's been built into Sendmail for as long as I can remember. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 00:33:29 -0600 From: Christopher Wolf Subject: Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent > From: Barry Margolin > Subject: Re: Domain Registrars Sued Over URL Patent > Organization: Looking for work > Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 03:47:26 GMT > In article , Monty Solomon > wrote: >> The suit accuses Network Solutions and Register.com of selling rights >> to Web URLs and e-mail addresses that infringe on a patent that was >> granted to Javaher and Weyer on Dec. 20, 2003. The patent covers the >> method of assigning URLs and e-mail addresses of members of a group >> such that the "@" sign is the dot in the URL. For example, if a group >> used a so-called third-level URL, www.john.smith.com, the e-mail >> address would be john@smith.com. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How in the *hell* could those turkeys >> have been granted a patent on December 20, *2003* for a system which >> has been in common use for about twenty years? > Although I think the patent is kind of silly, I'm not sure I agree > with you that the system "has been in common use". They're not > trying to patent the general system of email addresses, just a very > specific kind of email address that is linked to a subdomain and a > database of forwarding address. > Can you provide a handful of examples of systems where the maintainer of > automatically arranges for email addressed to @ to > be relayed to the owner of .? Try to include some examples > from two decades ago (the very birth of the DNS system), since you claim > this system has been in use that long. Roadrunner did it 4 or 5 years ago when I had a residential account with them. Although they described it as working in the opposite direction, i.e. if your login(email) was foofoo, you could access your web site with either www.rr.com/foofoo or www.foofoo.rr.com I think this feature is basically built into Apache, isn't it? ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 22:21:10 -0700 From: Joey Lindstrom Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Organization: Telus Sucks! Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks On Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:37:34 -0500 Michael Quinn wrote about Wireless Home Networks: > Three colleagues, all more knowledgeable and opinionated than me, > have strongly warned against the more expedient wireless solution > because of security vulnerabilities. I thought these things were > range limited Part 15 devices, and I live on a culdesac where > someone "cruising for hot spots" would be pretty conspicuous. Would > appreciate any ideas or experiences, good or bad, that the > readership would be willing to share, either here in the Digest or > off net. TD is a teriffic resource. Michael, If you take the time to properly secure your wireless network, you'll have little to worry about. The problem is, many don't. I can drive around my neighbourhood and find six or seven unprotected networks with my laptop in a radius of just a few blocks (I can successfully connect to these networks and start websurfing, or downloading porn, or spamming, or anything I want). Typically, a wireless network by default has no encryption or other protections turned on. You need to turn all this stuff on yourself. To start, you need to set your "SSID", which is a unique string of text that differentiates "your" network from somebody else's. Many folks don't do this, and leave it at the default. When I cruise my neighbourhood, I see a lot of networks named "DEFAULT" or "LINKSYS". You should change this to something else, and to be safe it should be something that doesn't uniquely identify your location (ie: don't use your house number as part of the name of your SSID, or your business name if using it at work, etc.). Not all access points/routers support this, but if possible, you should DISABLE SSID BROADCAST. If you do this, this will deter all but the most determined hackers -- your network won't be visible to others (without specialized software) even if your encryption isn't turned on. But you definitely wanna turn this on. The most-common encryption standard is "WEP", or "Wired Equivalent Privacy" (I think). This has to be turned on at your access point. You'll have to give your access point an encryption key, and you'll have to use the same encryption key on all computers in your network. For most people, this will be enough. However, there are known weaknesses in WEP, and a VERY determined hacker (including law enforcement types) might POSSIBLY be able to determine your keys and snoop on your traffic. In practice, on a typical home network, this will be extremely difficult (not enough packets flying around to build a large enough statistical universe), but you should be aware of it. There is a new wireless standard called "WPA" (WiFi Protected Access, I think), which is supposed to be one heck of a lot more robust - so far as I know, nobody's managed to break it yet. However, support for this new standard is not yet universal. 1) Your access point/router needs to support it. I think most new Linksys hardware supports it, either out of the box or with a firmware upgrade (I recently upgraded my Linksys "g" router to the latest firmware and this added WPA support). 2) Each PC needs to support it. For those PC's running Windows XP, you can update your system via Windows Update and your system will support WPA natively, regardless of what wireless adapter card(s) you've got. For PC's running other operating systems, your need to make sure that your wireless adapter card(s) support this, either in hardware or software. If it doesn't say it does, then it probably DOES NOT (but check with your dealer and/or the manufacturer's website). If all points in your network support WPA, then activating it is actually easier than activating WEP (fewer things to choose, and thus fewer possible mismatches), and it's far more secure. Joey Lindstrom ------------------------------ From: kd1s@aol.comremvthis (Kilo Delta One Sierra) Date: 18 Jan 2004 05:33:33 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Subject: Re: Wireless Home Networks > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for your kind words about the > Digest. If you go with wireless solutions to *anything*, I suggest > you make certain your security is **very tight** at all times. From > years ago where the technique of 'cruising for dial tone' was a > commonplace activity -- people drive down the street with a cordless > handset listening for dial tone from *your* cordless phone then > proceed to make a few long distance or premium charge (a/c 900 for > example) calls on your bill -- to more modern times where like the > naked man in Toronto they drive down the street with a laptop PC > and a WiFi connection downloading kiddie porn behind your back, and > then when postal inspector Zipp or FBI Inquisitor Laws get to your > house you wind up taking the rap for it because *their* knowledge > of computers is so woefully lacking (like any police officer) -- well, > you don't want to get in that kind of mess, I am sure. If you go > wireless then KEEP IT LOCKED UP TIGHTLY. Or better still, keep it all > wired, and still keep yourself locked up. > I still have to giggle a little about the day the FBI came here to > my house during that Cameraware scam, and the Inquisitor said to me > in a self righteous tone of voice, "well yes, I agree with you that > spam can be a bad problem but the spammers do not send out kiddie > porn." Oh yeah? Keep a good firewall up all the time, either wired > or wireless. That's IMO, and note, there is no 'H' as the third > letter there; that's because I do not give Humble opinions. PAT] First thing to do is set it so the SSID isn't broadcast but has to be hand coded on each machine. Granted, it'll fly across the air but it's one more layer. The current WEP is what, 128 bit? That works out to 16 bytes -- not a stretch to crack. Many wireless routers now have built in firewalls. They allow you to set only the MAC addresses of the attached computers as being able to access the net. Unfortunately you can also sniff this information out as it's embedded in every packet flying out in the air. Then there are of course solutions like Blue Socket. Unfortunately I don't think they fit into the budget of most people. Part of the problem we're going to see with Wi-Fi is a mixing of standards. Cisco has already started with the LEAP stuff. It is why I will not install wireless routers anywhere in my home or office. I will instead string cable and punch down the CAT-5 terminations myself. ------------------------------ From: John Sasso Subject: Equipment for Emulating POTS Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 04:43:12 GMT Organization: Road Runner I am looking for an "affordable" device that can simulate analog POTS lines for a Cisco Network Academy lab. The device should have a capacity for, say, 16 to 32 POTS lines. I checked out the ADTRAN Atlas 550, which is very extensive in its features but is quite pricey ($3500-$4000); I am primarily concerned about the POTS capability. Any recommended hardware that serves the purpose would be greatly appreciated! --john ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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